If you were trying to launch a music career, and you decided to make decisions based on what the American Idol judges say while they’re commenting on the live performance episodes, then you would implode.

Because, seriously… I’ve been digging through the archives, and in the entire history of the world, there has never been a group of people more fickle than these judges, up to and including the 19th-century French monarchs.

Need proof? Take a look at this lesson I learned form last night’s episode, when the Top 12 men boys guys performed for our votes for the first time:

Don’t reinterpret a song, but don’t do a soundalike version, either. Except when it’s the right thing to do.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

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If I were prone to street preaching, then I’d be down on the corner this morning, shouting to the world about Mumford & Sons.

And no, despite what its (kind of terrible) name implies, Mumford & Sons is not North America’s number one distributor of reasonably-priced winter wear. It’s a British folk-rock band fronted by Marcus Mumford.

Check that: It’s an amazing British folk-rock band.

Sigh No More, the band’s debut album, has the grandeur of Arcade Fire, the raw emotion of The Swell Season, and the muscular melody of R.E.M. during their Out of Time and Automatic for the People years.

Their music is passionate, authentic, beautiful. I don’t know how to say this without hyperbole, so just indulge me… their music makes me feel more alive. It fills me with emotions so strong that I can’t really define them. At least not yet.

But I want to share this music before I “understand it.” I’m still in the “pre-critical” phase of my enjoyment—I’m still just feeling the rush of each song—and I want to spread that feeling far and wide.

So after the jump, I’ll embed my current favorite songs. I hope they speak to you, too.

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Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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I feel Big Love changing, and while I’m not quite ready for a divorce, our marriage is certainly in trouble.

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If you’ve ever filled out a ballot at an Oscar party, then you’ve probably felt your eyes glaze over when you got to the Short Film categories. Live Action What? Animated Who Now? When it comes to these races, there’s usually nothing to do but guess.

Until now! Behold… a guide to all ten of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films! (Fictional films, that is. I haven’t seen the short documentaries.) Use this as your guide, and you’ll get a leg up on everyone else at your Oscar party.

And of course, let me encourage you to see these films if you have a chance. All of them are interesting, and some of them are brilliant. Taken together, they demonstrate how vital short films can be.

Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures are currently presenting all of this year’s nominees in a single event that’s screening throughout the country. Use this website to see if it’s playing at a theater near you.

And now… on with the guide!

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Happy almost-weekend everyone! Woo-hoo! To send you out on a high note, I would like to share these delicious morsels from the blogosphere…

First, Roommate Joe and his friend AB Chao delivered a hilarious live-blog of the short program portion of Men’s Olympic Figure Skating. Even if you missed the skaters or don’t know a thing about them, I encourage you to read this recap and enjoy phrases such as “I’d like to invite Evan Lysacek to jump straight up my ass.”

Second, over at Benefit of the Doubt, Jesse Miksic writes smart things about movies. I’m especially impressed by his deconstruction of what goes wrong in Wolfman. He even creates a vector graphic to prove one of his points. That’s commitment, people.

Third, have a gander at “Five Frames From,” a wicked-fun game over at My New Plaid Pants. You see five still-frames from a movie, and then you have to guess the movie. Whoa!

Finally, if you are a geek for statistics, then you should lose yourself for a few moments in College Results Online. It’s a website that breaks down major stats from tons of colleges and universities. What’s the average SAT score at Brown? How many women graduated from UC Irvine in 2005? Find out here! (Here’s a tip… once you look up a school, click on the tab that says “similar colleges.” That’s where you’ll find the most stats laid out in the most accessible way.)

By DOUG STRASSLER

If someone were to ask me my favorite TV show of all time, there’d be a long list of shows that tie for the number 2 position (or, in the spirit of the current Olympics, take home the silver): series as diverse as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Family Ties, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, St. Elsewhere, and The Wire would all have to share space on the podium.

However, there’s one show that has held a firm grip on the gold medal for two decades now: Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s haunting, irreverent and sadly short-lived concept series set in the woods of the Northwest. More than any other show I have ever seen, Peaks created a world and a mystique of its own. Even when the initial “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery was resolved, I remained glued to the show, so unique was its community of characters.

Of the cast, Kyle McLachlan, Piper Laurie and Sherilyn Fenn received the most attention, but it’s another actress that caught my eye – largely because of her own two bulging orbs. Yes, I write this IPO in honor of Grace Zabriskie, a fantastic character actress who has flown under the radar for the last thirty years.

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Hey all! Over at TDF STAGES, the online theatre magazine that I edit, we just posted a cheeky little video about how to self-produce a play Off-Off Broadway.

The information in the clip is real and (hopefully) helpful, but the talk show we created to deliver that information is awesomely, totally fake.  Many thanks to my friend Bianca for playing a faux newshound!

(If you want to see this video with closed captioning, just go here.)

So I just saw the video for Rihanna’s new single, “Rude Boy,” and like a kitten with a dangling piece of string, I am fascinated.

True, this video isn’t doing something shockingly new. In her “Galang” video, M.I.A. uses the same Keith Haring/Basquiat/80s Graffiti aesthetic, and after seeing the set for the Broadway musical Fela!, I realize that Rihanna’s clip also has elements of AfroBeat style. And take a look at this 90s-tastic video from Vanessa Williams. There’s a total resemblance.

(And yes… that’s the second time I’ve written about that Vanessa Williams video.)

But despite its obvious influences, the Rihanna video, directed by Melina Matsoukas, has a little something extra. For one, the production design is flawless. It’s absorbing to notice just how carefully the creative team has stitched the clip’s various visual styles together, so that the stuffed lion and the animated crown and the black-and-white footage look like they exist in the same world. And then there’s the colors, which are so sharp and exciting they maek the screen feel alive.

Meanwhile, because people keep getting shadowed by screen-printed versions of themselves, the clip adds unusual dynamism to the familiar “stand still, look sexy” music video strategy.  It also seems important to me that this clip moves slowly, at least by music video standards. Isntead of frantic jump cuts, we get relatively languorous shots that let each surreal image sink in. This matches the tempo of the song, and it gives a sexy confidence to what we’re seeing.

I can’t discount Rihanna, either. Her intensity really sells the whole package.

What do you guys think of this piece of pop art?

Update: Props to my colleague Ginger (star of that silent movie I made) for pointing out that “rude boys” are a fundamental part of ska culture and that their iconography (including the lion) appears in this video. I learn something every day!

Here are my thoughts, questions, and concerns about the current season of The Office. What are yours?

(1) Is anyone else disturbed by the subplot that has Ryan and Dwight hatching a sinister plot to destroy Jim’s life? It’s just so nasty. The show has always been rife with petty hostility, but it emerged in ways that were just goofy enough to be harmless and/or endearing. Creed’s bug-eyed freakishness, for instance, is too cartoonish to seem dangerous.

But when Ryan and Dwight get together, they’ve got a hard edge. They talk about murdering Jim. About stealing his personal information. And something in Rainn Wilson and B.J. Novak’s performances don’t let us off the hook.  They seem like they really mean it and that their vengeance could actuallybe wrought. It’s unsettling.

If the show’s emotions and motives are going to feel honest, then I want them to romantic emotions or empathetic motives. Jim and Pam’s love? Yes. Michael’s loneliness? Sure. Live it up. That lets me feel connected to and reflected in the show. When I sense real threats of violence emerging, however, I get freaked out. This is not the escape I look for in The Office.

Also, this subplot might bother me less if the violent threats were directed against Meredith or Creed or Angela. Again, those characters are just exaggerated enough that I don’t quite believe in them as real people. When Meredith gets attacked by that bat, then it’s kind of like watching Wile E. Coyote fall off a cliff: You know it’s not real.

Jim, however, seems much more actual. You threaten him, and you kind of threaten me. Not cool, sitcom! Not cool!

(2) On the flip side, I’m loving the Erin/Nard-Dog romance, even though the circumnstances are totally unrealistic.   I do not believe that a real man would ever buy his crush every item on the 12 Days of Christmas list, and I do not believe that a grown American woman wouldn’t recognize Snoopy and Woodstock on a Valentine’s Day card. However, I do believe these things about Andy and Erin because they are played with such commitment. The actors make their wild situations feel authentic.

What’s the lesson of these two bullet points? I think it’s that The Office always works best when it’s balancing perfectly on the line between the actual and the exaggerated, but if it falls over that line in either direction, I want it to be in the service of love-or-kindess-related plotline. Again, I don’t want that from every show, but that is what I want from this one.

(3) I love Kathy Bates as the ball-busting, big-haired CEO who now owns Dunder-Mifflin. I hope this character gets her own spinoff series that then becomes a movie, and I hope Bates wins a second Oscar for it.

(4) Bring back the cute boy in the warehouse! Oscar needs a date!

Hey all! I’m very proud to announce that Theatre Development Fund has officially launched TDF STAGES, a new online magazine dedicated to the performing arts. As the magazine’s editor, I’m writing and assigning features, creating short films, and overseeing all sorts of other fun stuff. I am loving every second of it, and I will keep you posted on the highlights.

Today, I’m excited to share this story, which profiles two playwrights who have turned interviews with real-life Marines into an Off Broadway play called ReEntry.

Between them, the writers—who are also well-known downtown actors—have seven brothers in the military. That’s brought up a lot of interesting questions about their relationship to this play. When you’re interviewing people you care about, and then turning those interviews into a script, how does your emotional tie to the material affect your work?

I think you’ll enjoy how the playwrights explore this idea, and I’d love to hear your thoughts!